Page 13 - ROCKNATION ISSUE 25

ROCKNATION ISSUE 25 PAGE 13

(Cont. from page 12) But you can never be sure how other people will
feel, that is for sure. So we were delighted to see, when the first
reviews were rolling in, that the albums were praised unanimously as
our best album so far. Such a great feeling! And even more reviews
keeps coming in all the time, and it gives us so much energy to keep
striving for our goals and to keep working hard as a band.

Who did the CD artwork for “Where The Monsters Dwell” and do
you give the artist ideas or do you let them just create freely?
The artist is Lenore Ani, an extremely talented young woman from
Belarus. I searched the internet for a talented artist and stumbled
upon her work on and thought it would be a perfect match. And she
really delivered, we were very happy about how it all turned out. In this
case we actually had a few different ideas and concepts and we actually sort of merged them and came up with the
concept that became the album cover. Lenore also provided some fantastic booklet artwork where she was given free hands
to do whatever she felt fitted the album as a whole.

Please tell us about your videos you have released.
Our first video, “Hard To Keep, Hard To Find”, we recorded at Tobbes place. He actually lives on an old farm, so he had a
big empty barn that we used as location. It was FREEZING cold, and I lost the feel of my fingers as they went purple LOL.
But we persevered and it became a pretty cool video! For our second video we hired the same guy to do the video shoot,
Martin Björnlund, and we shot it at Sticky Fingers, Gothenburg on our release party. The whole night was magical, it was our
first gig in our hometown for two years so a lot of fans, friends and families gathered to celebrate the new album. And we
captured some of it on the music video for “Where The Monsters Dwell”!

Your band has played many festivals please tell us about that and what other bands you appeared with.
We’ve played some really cool festival with the obvious standout being Sweden Rock Festival 2016 where we opened the
whole festival in front of thousands of people. Such a cool experience and the festival was packed other amazing acts like
Queen, Twisted Sister, Foreigner, King Diamond and many more. We’ve also played in Norway on Tons of Rock, with acts
like Slayer, Opeth and Anthrax. And many other festivals but those two were probably the coolest ones!

If you had to tell someone what Saffire sounded like, what bands would you mention?
We’re usually compared to early Rainbow, or Dio-era Black Sabbath which is fine by me, those are some of our biggest
influences I suppose. But I also feel we’re still something different, something of our own but in general most of our influences
come from the late 70s, early 80s, hard rock and heavy metal. We’re also quite heavy on the keyboards, using the hammond
organ, mini moogs, mellotron, pianos and lots of stuff.

Your band is from Sweden what is the scene like there now compared to many years ago?
It’s still thriving I must say. Gothenburg has been the Swedish capital of music for many years and the world capital of metal.
There is a culture and a community where it makes it easy to form new bands and to get to play on some really cool clubs
in town. And there are lots of fans and people who are going out to see the shows. So I think it will continue to thrive, for all
genres!

What plans do you have for 2018?
Our plan for the rest of the year is to keep playing good shows, and to get the word out there. I think there are many people
who haven’t discovered us, and who would like what we’re doing if they only got the chance, so we’re working on doing shows
abroad and stuff like that.

Thank you for taking time for this interview. Any last words to the fans?
Thanks for the interview and thanks for supporting all the good music out there!

https://www.facebook.com/saffiresweden